Prufrock's Wargaming Blog

Thursday, January 10, 2013

The search for the Perfect Ancient Wargame...

When I got back into miniatures wargaming about eight years ago I had only a vague idea of what I was letting myself in for. I imagined that I would paint some figures, find a set of rules, and achieve a comfortable wargaming stasis.

The rules set that accompanied my first forays into figure purchasing and painting was Classical Hack by Phil Viverito. I joined the yahoo group, asked for advice, then ordered the rules and figures for the 2nd Punic War at the same time. "I'm off!" I thought.

Three months later, with two small armies painted and a couple of games under my belt, I got an uneasy feeling. How on earth, I wondered, can it be right to allow a unit attacked by two others the chance to score twice as many hits as a unit attacked by only one? One on one the maximum hits were three vs three; two on one the maximum hits were six vs six. It didn't make sense to me. I tried to get around it by writing house rules. Then I gave up.

Next up was Simon MacDowell's Legio, which a fellow ancients enthusiast was modifying. I was very keen on this and had lots of ideas about how to reinvent the wheel. We engaged in lengthy email discussions. Some months later, I realised that I did not really know what I was talking about, did not yet have enough figures for the game, and did not like two of the key mechanisms in the set, namely dicing for control and the variable move distance.

During this phase I also ordered a number of other rules and downloaded a few free or community sets: DBM, Armati, a diceless one, the Crusades set Shattered Lances, Hoplon, and some I now forget.

By now I had been introduced to another ancients gamer who lives a couple of hours north of me, and he showed me DBA, DBM, and Strategos. I joined the Society of Ancients and we both ordered a copy of Strategos II.

Around this time I discovered a new boardgame called Commands and Colors: Ancients and grabbed that. I joined the online community and spent a year or two playing countless Commands and Colors games live using VASSAL or solo at home. I was a member of boardgamegeek, wrote some reports, took photos of the game with miniatures, partook of spirited debates and so on and so forth. I won a couple of competitive but gentlemanly online tournaments and started to think this was the best game going round.

But there was a problem with Commands and Colors that nagged at me: it was much better played online or as a boardgame than it was played with miniatures. Sure, it looked nice, but half of the units hardly moved at all during the battles, and it slowly became apparent that the attraction of Commands and Colors was not after all playing out an engaging alternate history, but the thrill of how you handled your cards, positioned your units, rolled your dice and bluffed and outwitted your opponent. There were great depths to the strategy, but no matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, the reality was that that strategy did not have much to do with what I was encountering in Livy, Caesar, Polybius and Plutarch.

And on the home front now we had a daughter. It was a harder to commit to online tournaments. I could play, but not every week or two. I began rationing the tournaments I played in and quietly slipped out of the scene. I commenced looking for other games to play, ones that I could jump in and out of in better sympathy with domestic rhythms.

I started playing a bit more Strategos II. Of course, I was playing every few months with my mate in Osaka, but I began giving it the odd go solo at home. I'd write up a report for the yahoo group, or for boardgamegeek, and I started to see how well it played and how well it reflected what I was reading in the ancient historians. I became enthusiastic, as is my wont with these kinds of things. There were grand discussions on the yahoo group. I learned a lot about how to approach the primary sources. I wrote a review and an article, I bought the newest edition, Lost Battles. I started a blog, began photographing, recording and writing about games. I began playing other rules sets occasionally, in desultory fashion: Basic Impetus, Ancient and Medieval Warfare, Ancients D6, Warhammer Ancients. I had PBEM games.

It was good, but it all lead back to Lost Battles. In Lost Battles I could see the narrative. The story of how the game unfolded struck me there more than it did anywhere else. Everything made sense, was plausible, and could be explained in real terms.

As I played more I organised a couple of multiplayer online games of Lost Battles, mainly to teach people the game, but also to see how it worked with a chain of command superimposed. The game and its multiplayer rules sort of worked, but participants got a bit annoyed about the limitations of the format and some players didn't get the rules very well or decided they didn't really like the set after all. There was perhaps a little frustration or bad feeling, and that was the very opposite of what I was trying to generate.

It wasn't the multiplayer success I was hoping it would be.

By this stage we had three children and it was increasingly difficult to find time to pursue hobby activities at night. The number of solo games I was playing dropped off, but there was a big push on the boardgame version of Lost Battles, and I got excited about it. I wrote a review, played a number of games, had a good time; but without the spectacle of playing with figures I couldn't quite get into it as much. It didn't scream at me to take it off the shelf.

I found when I did play with miniatures that I had played - almost to death - the scenarios I had the figures for. I fiddled around with some rules changes, tested a friend's low-luck variant in a couple of email games and thought about how I could get a campaign going. Again, there were periods of enthusiasm, but I couldn't sustain it as I had previously.

I decided to freshen up. I got Warmaster Ancients and Hail Caesar and played a few playtest turns of both. I tried looking at Field of Glory again and promptly looked away. I went back to Commands and Colors for a game or two and was reminded anew that it was fun and skillful but just not really that good as a miniatures game. The amount of effort it took to set the game up and move the figures around was disproportionate to the reward. And I couldn't find a story in it that could rise much above the game mechanisms. There was both too much inaction and too much action. It was out of kilter; unbalanced. I couldn't get a plausible 'game-as-alternative-history' story out of it unless I was prepared to make things up or play sub-optimally. It would always come down to "and then X card was played and some good dice rolling got side Y home," because that's where the interest was: how and in what way the cards were played, how you exploited the weaknesses of your opponent, and whether the dice supported your play.

So, there I was. As far as Lost Battles was concerned I'd run out of scenarios to play solo, I couldn't get a campaign started, development of the VASSAL module had stalled, I was out of steam, and other alternatives were not quite what I was looking for.

In view of this I decided to challenge myself to write some rules of my own that would work with non-wargamers. I'll give it a go, I thought, and try to see things with new eyes.

The whole project was stimulating, and in doing it I developed a better understanding of what designers must do, and how they must target certain things at the expense of others.

What I see now is that there is no perfect wargame, and no "comfortable wargaming stasis". There is no one game that will be right for all situations. Rules will grab me for a season at different times, and for different reasons. Their immediate appeal will wax and wane, but if they are good I'll keep coming back to them, seeing them again from different angles, with different ends in mind, and hopefully with new understanding of what they are trying to do, and of what can be reasonably expected of them.

It's taken me a while to reach this point, but it has been a wonderful journey through a world that is part history, part alternative history, part mathematical framework, part participatory drama. It has been experienced alone, with friends, with strangers via a computer, and with kindred spirits across the wargaming spectrum.

Long may it continue.

But if I could find perfection within a wargame (we can always live in hope...) what would it look like?

I think I'd see it in those moments within games when all is balance, excitement and potential, in those times when something echoes history so keenly it jolts us, when the satisfaction of a plan well made, a move well executed, or the observation of a brilliant, mournful, heroic, tragic tabletop action fills us with a childish delight in play allied to an adult awareness that this world we create, this little space that is ours, where this cinematic, dramatic need to enact stories on our tabletops is fulfilled is - in its very fragility, in its practical uselessness, in its capacity to lift our spirits, reveal aspects of ourselves to ourselves and heal the little wounds of the long day - something that is worth doing, worth recording and perhaps even worth a little celebrating.

And if you can't have perfection, I've found that rolling double box cars to order makes a pretty good substitute!

And for readers (if anyone has got this far, thank you!) do you have a perfect or close-to-perfect set? What do you see as 'perfection' in a wargame, and what will mar one? Have you found a comfortable stasis, or are you too something of an itinerant?

I guess the journey is the destination in many ways though, isn't it? I'm looking forward to seeing your rules, Simon. If you want someone to quietly look them over when they are ready, I'd be very happy to.

The set we are playtesting in Glasgow, Tactica II, ticks most of the boxes I need in a set. Not all, but close enough for us to play them at the club and elsewhere pretty much all of the time. I'm prepared to compromise to some extent. Now if only they were published I could say a bit more!

Ok, I confess I've never looked for perfection so my journey has been much shorter and simpler than yours.

Ever take a peek at Impetus for ancients? The rules come in at 40 pages and a full game can be played to a decisive conclusion in 3 hours or less. I REALLY love the Impetus rule, which reflects that certain troop types go charging across the board to lay into the nearest enemy (Gauls, Knights and such). And lastly, their basing is simply genius.

I did a review after my 1st game which you can read here: http://twincitiesfieldofglory.blogspot.com/2012/01/impetus-test-drive.html

Thanks Monty, I've played the basic version, and my miniatures gaming buddy and I were at one time thinking of picking up the full set. I can't remember why we didn't, but it may have had something to do with getting sidetracked by 6mm microarmour!

It's one I should pick up though, so thanks for the reminder, and I'll take a look at your review tonight :)

At the risk of making this comment as long as your post, I hear you, man!

I started with WRG 6th in 1979 and put me off ancients for a long time. in 1994 decided I really did like ancients, and wa seven willing to give 7th a go but DBM was out and spent about 2 years playing that. But it did not feel like a ancients battle. I discovered Armati and playing that a few times a year for the next 10 years. I really like Armati and, to me, I really felt like and ancients commander and it seemed to give great results, and at least in my small circle, we all enjoyed it. But then I found Warrior Kings, almost the antithesis on Armati - no rigour, vary chaotic. I thought I had found my two favourite sets - Armati and Wariror Kings - both approaching ancients battles from a completely different perspective, but both giving a great game and, again, in only my opinion, matching history. But, never being satisfied, as you can see from my blog, I love playing with rules and how they approach recreating ancient clashes. I, like you, came to realise a few years ago there is no perfect set and likely never to be one. Each ruleset I like has a different feel and gets results with different mechanisms. It all just depends on what I am trying to get out of the game at the time. So i have favourites, but none perfect and I am happy with that. Now, if only I could do the same for ww2 - I am still searching for a perfect ruleset and have not reached a state where I have a few favourites and can give up on searching!

Ah yes, chronicling a search for the ultimate WWII game would no doubt take a whole blog...

I think I now take a similar view to you, and am more willing to see rules as 'horses for courses'. Your blog is an inspiration in that regard, but I don't know that I can keep as many sets straight in my head as you are able to.

I hope I've got a few more good years left to find out!

And I really must give Armati another crack, as I liked what I saw when I tested it out a few years ago. Might see if I can get to that sometime soon.

Last week we have finally managed a game of Lost Battles with the boardgame version. As a result I was interested in reading your views of your game. I actually found the boardgame version more satisfying than using miniatures. I believe this is, rather oddly, due to my wargaming brain being able to handle the abstarction of Lost Battles with card counters more easily than it can when using miniature counters.

No, that makes perfect sense to me, Keith. I didn't use to think of LB as a miniatures game either until I got used to the system. After I'd played LB enough though it started to seem strange using measuring tapes and requiring base-to-base contact!

Hi Aaron!Nice post there. I'm looking into a fun miniature fantasy game (yeah, I know, fantasy!), because so I don't have to grind my teeth too much with historicity. :DWhat do you think of DBA? (and its smaller cousin Hordes of the Things, if you have tried it, that is). :)

Hi Piero, I quite like DBA in its big battle version but I've not played enough to really understand the subtleties of it. I've only played HoTT twice, but for fantasy I probably prefer the older school / Warhammer style - individual figure removal, heroic characters with individual stats, magic weapons, etc.

How many figures are you intending to use? I think Song of Blades and Heroes is quite popular as a fantasy set (skirmish level, IIRC) as is Rally Round the King, but I think you can download HoTT off the net these days so you may as well have a look and see what you think :)

I prefer mass combat to individual skirmishes, that a role-playing game system may handle (a very good one for this purpose is Savage World, which can manage minis combat with a lot of individual customization).

Warhammer is truly too random, and doesn't really have a lot of tactics to it. I was looking for something flexible, that could handle scenarios - such as ambushes - was relatively fast, and had a great narrative. The Grail game!

HOTT I've downloaded and in the process of learning the rules, it looks pretty flexible and straightforward.

Someone has pointed me in the direction of Impetus which also has a Fantasy variant.

As for now I will try HOTT using Battleground Fantasy Warfare cards, to see how it plays and get the big picture. :)

A small semi-private wargames group I belonged to campaigned a long running ancient campaign for the better part of twenty years, off and on. The campaign started off with semi-historical national countries (at least a half dozen players as I recall). Interestingly enough, considering your Zama post, the successful country was Carthaginian, and over two or three years it conquered most of the known world and ended up ruling an empire about the size of the Roman empire. (I ought to add that the campaign area was also imaginary, some of use liked drawing maps).The first rules we used were WRG 3rd edition (I said this was a long time ago) but we ended up sometime before 2000 using WRG 7th edition.Since the first setup, when we had a Roman country, a Carthaginian country, one or more Successors, Gauls, Greeks, Spaniards, Persians etc, other "players" were added which were not strictly historical, but based on our campaign owner's research and fancies. In the east the empire was attacked by Iazygioi, in the north there were Germans, the desert to the south was peopled by people who looked like Blemye, the invaders from the north west were based on the Khazars. After a few years, the players who were playing the main imperial centres were able to modify the troops they raised, which were originally those of the areas where they were based, but they also had allies, mercenaries and auxiliaries who fought in their native mode.Thus the Western empire which had conquered some successors used an army of pike phalanx, slingers, elephants and cataphract cavalry, armed with bow and lance.The centre, which became the most powerful, employed the most variety, hoplites, cataphract cavalry, horse archers, good light infantry, Roman style heavy infantry and german style cavalry with heavy cavalry and light infantry mixed.

The point is, since we are talking about rules, that the battles we fought could involve all sorts of troops in all sorts of combinations. It all depended on what army was fighting what. There really were a lot of different battles. Large armies, small armies, infantry , cavalry, heavy , light, good quality, poor quality. Set piece battles, encounter battles, battles with terrain, battles without.The only situations we didn’t fight on the table top were sieges, marches and ambushes.WRG 7th edition had bad points I agree. However, in our situation, the overwhelming good point was that there was no super army. Irregulars were not better than regulars. Heavy did not always beat light. Missiles could be important but could be countered. Any troop type had its strong points and its weak points. Use it in the right way and it might be effective. Use it for something it couldn’t do and you would be in trouble.Any army which was not obvious rubbish could be used effectively. A commander who could use his troops effectively could beat or hold his own against seemingly superior troops. This was particularly true when a player fought a reasonable number of battles with "his" army and got to know how to use it. Random factors could be important (and particularly when looking for someone to blame for a defeat) but not overwhelmingly so.

Our campaign, when being run by our knowledgeable umpire, contained a lot besides fighting, money, personality, people, random events, supply, politics, diplomacy etc. The important thing here, apart from giving the umpire an interest, was that it imposed constraints on the ability of a player to raise massive armies and fling them over the frontier. Such a player would run out of money after a few weeks. It also meant that every battle had a context which gave different victory conditions. You might “win” by fighting a losing draw.The rules we used were also scalable, we could fight big battles as well as smaller ones. So, the good points about WRG 7th wereThere was no super troop type or super army - practically any army could be competitiveThere was no particularly superior set of orders or deployment or way of fighting - the rules didn't favour any particular deployment or orders, just the right ones.We could fight small battles as well as large onesThe results seemed to be more or less accurateIt seemed better to use troops in more or less historical waysIt allowed us to have a very large range of army types, employing the full range of available troop types.Against this, it was difficult sometimes to know what the rules wanted or required, there was a lot to learn and sometimes they needed interpreting and even modifying. These common complaints are all true. But, as I hope I have explained, they do have real strengths. I think all gamers looking at ancient rules should start with WRG. Try to look past the poor design and convoluted writing to get at the underlying principles.

Sorry to be so long getting back to you John. I must've approved the comments and then completely forgotten to reply. My apologies! Thank you for your post, and sharing your WRG stories. I've been hearing a few more WRG tales on the SoA forum actually, and may have to try a set out at some stage.

I've also tried many ancients sets, starting with WRG 4th, then 5th, 6th 7th, then DBA, DBM, DBMM, Armati, Lost Battles, Command & Colors, Warhammer Ancients. Currently we are using Field of Glory and find it a very satisfactory game; the tactics are interesting, there are lots of decision points, it looks like an ancient battle, and the mechanisms are fairly elegant. I'm curious as to why you rejected this set?

Good question! The main reasons were the death roll (which I hated) and the problems we had finding anything in the rule book. The other thing is that it is not really a game for solo play, so unless I have a partner in crime it won't get played. I'd be happy to give it another crack at some stage, but Lost Battles gives more bang for the buck at the moment.

I have recently got a copy of the FOG book. Apart from saying that the full page illustrations are really awful (not the pictures of figures or the diagrams) I have to say that they are much longer and more complex than I expected (since all ancient gamers say WRG - too complex, too many sub rules etc so I assume all other rule sets are simple like DBA). Some things I like eg impact and melee phases, no skirmisher formation but others seem unnecessary eg difficult advances as well as complex moves and the roll of death, surely you have either morale based results or numbers based (removing figures) but not both? The basic ideas look good but the subclauses and special details go on for a hundred pages which seems too many to me.Would be interested in giving them a go sometime though.

im currently having a go at writing an ancients wargame set myself but am a big fan of FOG. once you learn where stuff is in the rule book (2nd ed better than first ed) it plays well. my favorite part would be the split combat phase (impact phase followed by the melee phase after shooting) it really does give the feel of the initial charge followed up by the continuing melee.

I've also been looking through games for ancients and actually DBM in it's geometric paper-scissor-rock mechanics (and really the worst rulebook I have ever seen written :) ) put me off for years. Then I got hand on Basic Impetus and things started to look right.

There may be issues with Impetus that I will eventually discover, but at the moment it seems that it concentrates on the things that I think ancient battles were about (not to mention time and space required).

Sounds like we've been on similar journeys. I was upset that I had some nice ancients figures but they never saw the light of day as there were no rules around that I wanted to play, and I felt like I had tried them all! Whilst browsing TMP a few months ago though I came across a call for playtesters for an ancients/medieval set called Sword & Spear. Unusually (I think) there was a small charge for the playtest draft...I didnt mind that and can quite understand why a ruleswriter might ask for it. Anyway, they had clearly been well tested already, and the presentation and attention to detail was also apparent. We at the club liked them straight away, and we've played around 7 games all told. That's more than I've played nearly any other published set in the last 4 years! Anyway, they are now released and available on pdf - if you are still after the holy grail then why not have a look at the details for it and some game reports at this link below and on TMP. Hope you do and look forward to hearing what you think of them.http://polkovnik.moonfruit.com/sword-spear/4583102656

Hi Mervyn, thanks for your comments. I've actually been following the Sword & Spear reports on TMP with some interest, and will likely take the plunge with them at some point. I also want to give Scutarii by William Butler a crack, but time is proving to be a problem at the moment, and I find when I do have the chance for a game I just want to stick to what I know!

Yes sure, I know what you mean. Have a look on the forum though and you should get a good idea of how they work which will smooth the process because they are worth a go, honest! In an ideal world you would find someone who knows them and can talk you through it...now if you would like to send over an airline ticket to Japan I might be able to help you out there....hoho!!

LOL! Aaron. I have Scutarii and Sword and Spear on my list to acquire when I cannot resist any longer and break down and gt them! I know it is a matter of when and not if but trying to delay as long as possible. Of course, in the last 6 months I have broken down and picked up Legion from SoA, an obscure 1992 ruleset Spear and Shield (looks OK) and another one Warriors of Antiquity (jury is out), Bijou Battles and Piquet's (my first venture into this system) Pulse of Battle. Definitely a when not an if for any ruleset!

Argh don't say there's no perfects rules! There must be we just need to keep looking! :pWell AMW has just brought me back to ancient wargaming and those rules are a lot of fun. I'm about to check out sword and spear right now.

Hi guys, I'm actually a archaeologist and war gamer and I am currently thinking about ways that ancient war games might be used to help people think about our past! This is a great post and I hope you don't mind that I have linked to it from my blog!

I must admit I have been playing ancients since the 70's. I have been away from the hobby for 15 years or so. I recently returned and to be honest like the look of FoG. arte de la guerre, just strikes me as DBM, with a souped up combat system.I used to play tournaments with some friends, and to be frank, I dont think there is any set of rules, that will stand the rigours of tournament play. Create a system, and people will abuse and stetch it to the limit. DBM et al, seemed to favour loads of cheap spear, bow and psiloi, 7th seemed to favour the army that had the most units, in tourney games at least (how many 2 element units can I get out of the army list, think my record was 26). I found DBM tiresome, as people began making fancy geometric patterns, with endless single elements. FoG appealed because only certain formation were legal, plus there was a Rennaissance set, with a very similar game mechanism. People seemed to like DBM's abstract simplicity, well if you like simplicity, lets just flick marbles at each others army, and see who wins.

Hi Aaron, I am in the same boat. I love Commands and Colors: Ancients and Lost Battles as you might remember. I wanted more of a tabletop miniatures game, and looked at others, including Sword & Spear and Impetus. My favorite now, however is Centuria (Torriani Games - http://www.torrianimassimo.it/). It has more detail and is less abstract than the others, and the army lists are very well done. It uses a reaction system that can make for some tense moment, and can sometimes lead to unpredictable results. Very enjoyable. You should check it out. Ken

I haven't tried a lot of the systems you've mentioned, but I have to say for simplicity while still retaining enough strategy, kings of War (and the soon to be released kings of War Historic) seem very good to me.

Yes, the version I played gave a nice little game on a DBA sized board. Attrition resulted in hits on a stand, not outright elimination so there was more sense of units degrading through the game. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure what John's done with it now. It used to be on his website, but I think it's had a few changes. Will have to check.

I think the rules have not changed. I posted a battle report back in 2013 that replayed the Battle of Heraclea with Ancients D6. It has a bit of detail on how the rule mechanisms work intermixed in the report, so you can see if it may be your cup of tea.

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